Tag: Georges St. Pierre

(Oh, this? Just the face of a man who knows he’s about to be chewed out by the Wheaties people. via Getty.)

By Scott Johnson

UFC 185 was a very interesting anomaly in the world of MMA, in which two incumbent champions were dethroned by the challengers who were considered underdogs going into the fight. Carla Esparza was only considered a slight favorite heading into her fight with Joanna Jedrzejczyk so the surprise there was minimal, but there weren’t many people expecting to see Rafael Dos Anjos topple Pretty Tony Pettis. Hell, most of us were already looking forward to Pettis vs. Nurmagomedov, but the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, and now the UFC Lightweight division has a new champion in its mix.

In the spirit of these events, I’ve compiled what I consider to be the top five upsets in UFC championship history. I have no doubts that there will be a difference in opinion as to which fights belong here or which order they should be in, but in the words of the great Oskar Schindler, “Fuck you, it’s my list and I’ll put who I want on it.”

When I was a kid, my favorite video game was Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out. What I loved most about the game was progressing through the rogue’s gallery of fighters and finally becoming champion, because it was only after you became champion that you got to greatest aspect of Punch-Out: The “Dream Fight” with Iron Mike himself. It was the original superfight before the term superfight ever existed.

The recent announcement of the boxing “Super/Dream Fight” between Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather finally happening (albeit 5 years too late) has once again gotten us MMA fans talking about what our equivalent could be, and on top of that, what actually makes a fight a “Super Fight” and not just a big fight, championship fight or other random main event.

When it was announced that we would be seeing a Kickboxer remake starring Georges St. Pierre and Dave Bautista back in May, I had the totally reasonable reaction of threatening to “eat a baby” if a remake of The Raid was also announced, which happened just days later. True to my word, I am now on something of a hiatus from public life, and would just like to let Mrs. Annabelle Smith of 247 Bakersfield Road, MN know that it was nothing personal.

Aaaaaaanyway, a press release sent out by Radar Films earlier this week (which we would have brought to you yesterday had CP’s mainframe not imploded) announced that another familiar face to MMA fans would be joining the project as well: former Strikeforce champ and In the Blood starGina Carano. Carano has been cast as “Vixen”, a fight promoter and “boa constrictor of this fighting jungle” who hopefully wears outfits like this and bites her lip a lot.

More details on the Kickboxer remake (w/relevant gifs) are after the jump.

Cain Velasquez became another victim (again) of the UFC’s so-called “injury bug,” pulling out of UFC 180 with a knee injury. This is great news for people who want to see a weirdo holding a UFC heavyweight title as Mark Hunt stepped in to fight original challenger Fabricio Werdum. This is bad news for fans who want to watch the greatest heavyweight talent in the sport since Fedor Emelianenko. It’s horrible news for the UFC, who set up this event in Mexico City to both help cultivate the Mexican market and provide a similar atmosphere for Velasquez that Conor McGregor received in Ireland earlier this year.

It’s another blow to the UFC’s pay-per-view business. UFC Chairman and CEO Lorenzo Fertitta told Sports Business Daily that “about 80 percent” of fights they wanted to put on have been cancelled. That’s probably an exaggeration (at least if we’re looking at the entirety of the UFC’s matchmaking), but the reality isn’t much better. Of the 14 events including and between UFC 168 and UFC 181 (including the cancelled UFC 176), only five have escaped an injury to a fighter in either the main or co-main event. That is, 64% of UFC PPVs within that timeframe have had alterations or cancellations to one of the featured bouts at the top of the card.

Combined with the loss of Georges St-Pierre (quasi-retirement) and Anderson Silva (wishboned leg), the injuries at the top of marquee events have led the UFC to its worst year on pay-per-view since 2005. In 2005, the UFC ran six pay-per-view events for a total of 950,000 buys and an average of 158,000 per event. This year hasn’t been that bad (2.22M total buys/277,500 per event), but that’s far below the “down years” of 2011-13. (It should be noted that those “down years” are in line with the total PPV business the UFC did prior to the 2009-10 Lesnar Era.)

Earlier this week, a report surfaced out of Montreal that former UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre was spotted in a restaurant with UFC president Dana White and UFC CEO Lorenzo Fertitta. At this point, no one is saying what the meeting was about. Maybe it was just one rich dude and two wealthy dudes sitting down for a lunch of Venison Haunch and Saucisson or Suckling Pig Rack and Flank (offered on the restaurant’s lunch menu at $36 and $42 respectively), or maybe it was a meeting to gauge St-Pierre’s interest in a return to the Octagon.

My sincere hope, for both the UFC and St-Pierre is that it was the former, not the latter. However, if the conversation was about a St-Pierre return to the UFC, I would advise both sides to stop right now because it will not help either in the long run.

In the post-fight press conference, White said of St-Pierre, “You owe it to the fans, you owe it to that belt, you owe it to this company, and you owe it to Johny Hendricks to give him that opportunity to fight again, unless you’re gonna retire…There’s no ‘Hey listen I’m gonna go on a cruise and be gone for two years.’”

It was an impassioned speech; too bad none of it happened to be true. St-Pierre, a man that made the UFC millions of dollars didn’t (and doesn’t) owe anyone anything. White’s public reaction to his cash cow walking away was ugly, nasty and served as a reminder of how quickly he is willing to throw a fighter under the bus, even if that fighter is recognized as one of the greatest combatants ever to set foot in the Octagon.

They say pimping ain’t easy, and that’s probably true for promoting too. (There’s a whole host of other uncomfortable comparisons to be made between the two professions as well.) Pimping is probably a lot harder when you constantly denigrate your talent. “Yeah, Mary? She makes a weird squealing noise when you bang her. But hey, it’s your money.” Yet, that’s exactly what UFC president Dana White does. Here are the top ten instances of Dana White burying his own fighters.

Kenny Florian and Nate Marquardt are two very different people. Where Florian is a suave, dark-haired Massachusetts lifer, Marquardt is a ginger mountain man who made sure to list himself first and foremost as a Christian on his Twitter bio. They have one thing in common though: Dana White called them both chokers.

Nate Marquardt lost a close fight to Yushin Okami at UFC 122. Okami was 9-2 in the UFC heading into the fight, and would go on to fight Anderson Silva for the title in his next appearance. That didn’t stop Dana White from calling Marquardt a choker and blasting the Greg Jackson-led corner (more on him in a bit!) for telling Marquardt he was leading on points.

As for Florian, White said he didn’t want to “take anything away from Gray Maynard” and wasn’t “bad-mouthing” or “trying to disrespect” Florian after UFC 118. But that’s exactly what he did when he said Florian “chokes in big fights” before reducing his performance to standing and staring at Maynard. Florian’s five UFC losses came to Diego Sanchez, Sean Sherk, B.J. Penn, Maynard, and Jose Aldo — all champions or title challengers. Maybe, just maybe, the overachieving Florian just wasn’t on their level?

To his detractors (aka Nick Diaz fans), that makes GSP a cold-blooded space-alien, a nerd who talks like a robot. That persona was set in stone at UFC 63 — eight years ago today, on September 23rd, 2006 — when St-Pierre infamously told Matt Hughes “I’m not impressed by your performance,” following Hughes’s third-round TKO victory against BJ Penn.

Even to this day, it’s still the most famous thing that the ex-champ has ever said, and has remained a dependable punchline among MMA fans. The St-Pierre/Hughes cage confrontation was incredibly awkward in its own way — “I’m not impressed by your performance” is like something Data would say to Wesley Crusher after learning about human combat sports. And yet, it was absolutely perfect for that moment.